Success in achieving the organization's objectives heavily relies on a culture that supports both diverse and shared beliefs that assist in guiding its strategy. The importance of a strong culture is reflected in three outcomes in the organization's daily operation: high competence of members in handling new situations, increased confidence in their undertakings, improved motivation by members in promoting the organization's values. Leaders need to play a critical role in promoting a strong culture from the selection stage of members, proper orientation of members, and conducting programs that emphasize its culture. In a globalization era, the cultural establishment of a strong organizational culture requires a multidimensional approach different from the traditional methods. The composition of many modern organizations includes members with diverse national origins. It becomes a leader's role to ensure people from different ethnicities work together.
The effects of poor cultural assessment are catastrophic to an organization since the low longer learning curve will reduce homogenous groups' output. The decreased ease and flow of communication and different working methods can result in misunderstanding within the workplace. Empowering the members to identify cultural challenges is a significant step in managing global teams. Effective application of diversity as demonstrated by global teams enhances cooperation, tolerance, and understanding. Although members in a homogenous team are likely to have naturally similar perceptions and management practices, global teams exhibit different responses to the same circumstances. Both types of groups have different traits and strengthen (Beauregard et al., 2018). While groups with members from the same cultural background have been shown to have higher satisfaction, their multicultural counterparts demonstrate improved group creativity in tackling challenges. Based on these facts, cultural assessment tools in leadership and management are necessary for a modern global organization. There exist several tools that managers can use to assess and evaluate cultural competency. Some of the instruments that are used include:
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Contextual Assessment of Organizational Culture (CAOC)
The CAOC instrument utilizes two vital concepts in the assessment of organizational culture. The first concept is an organizational culture that refers to the shared values and composition in the organization's diversity. The second concept is the organizational core task (OCT) which is the shared motive in the organization's activities and business. OCT includes the contents and demands that have to be met by the organization to achieve its objectives. The tool especially focuses on defining the demands of the specific work. The definition process involves interaction with members of the group. Issues such as the decision-making of individuals are assessed to determine institutional and ingroup collectivism.
Culture Gap Survey
The Culture Gap Survey tool makes a provision for an instrument that diagnoses cultural norms and practices. The tool obtains four Culture-Gap scores by determining the difference between desired norms and the actual norms. A higher likelihood of current norms being hindered by performance and motivation is indicated by a large difference (Mallak & Kurstedt, 2015). The instruments operate on the assumption that the force guiding conduct in an organization is the culture and not the rules, policies, and type of task. The tool is important because persistent gaps result in high levels of resistance to changes and innovations. Therefore, in a setting where there is high resistance to changes, deep-rooted culture gaps are likely in existence. The scores used in this tool are:
Task support: technical norms that occur within a short period. The smaller difference in task support determines performance improvement.
Social relationships: these are norms with a human orientation that occur within a short period. A smaller difference in social relationships improves performance.
Task innovations: these refer to technical norms that occur for a long period. A small difference in task innovation improves performance and morale.
Personal freedom: these are norms that have a human orientation for a long period. Less difference in personal freedom correlates to improved performance.
Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI)
The OCAI tool is arguably the most prominent in the assessment of organizational culture. The instrument diagnostically evaluates an organization's culture based on shared assumptions, common approaches, and core values. It utilizes a classification approach in the assessment of culture to identify the culture. Quantitative data from different individuals in the organization makes a realistic perception of culture. The four-factor model of OCAI can be categorized under two dimensions; flexibility versus stability in work and external versus internal variables of the organization (Karma & Vadi, 2016). The four factors used by OCAI to classify cultural factors are:
Clan culture: this archetype falls under the internal focus and flexibility of the OCAI tool. It represents the organization as a family where members are engaged in the decision-making process, and teamwork is enhanced.
Adhocracy culture: this factor falls under the external focus and flexibility component of OCAI and refers to organizational innovation. Specialization is a vital aspect of Adhocracy. Integration of employees in a common project is a significant component under this factor. Inadequate guidelines are not a hindrance to a group with adhocratic culture since members are motivated into productivity when there are no boundaries.
Hierarchy culture: this factor falls under the stability and internal focus components of OCAI. It focuses on stability and definite guidelines on how the organization should conduct its business. Its aspects include efficiency and vertical hierarchical structures.
Market culture: this factor falls under the stability and external focus of OCAI. This factor emphasizes competitiveness in the organization. The focus is on establishing an advantage in the market by relations with external entities.
A global team presents the organization with a diversity of social cultures that, if managed well, can be beneficial in improving outcomes and productivity. If poorly managed, a global team can result in reduced productivity. The composition of a global team presents that organization with various benefits. First, the era of neoliberalism and globalization has necessitated organizations to seek opportunities in various parts of the world; this can be achieved effectively using global teams. The organization can enhance a better relationship with their international clients through the team's input. Secondly, site-specific research used by multinationals can beneficially utilize the variety of perspectives to exactly match the needs of international clients. A third benefit is an opportunity for the organization to have a diversity of unique viewpoints in talking a challenge since the individual is coming from different backgrounds. Finally, when organizations employ managers from different cultural backgrounds, it adds to their diversity of experience in managing team members (Stocker et al., 2018). This approach often results in innovations and improved efficient processes.
On the other hand, if poorly managed, global teams may fail the organization to meet its objectives. Poor cultivation of trust can lead to unproductive conflicts and reduces cooperation. Team members may be reluctant to contribute their ideas due to cultural differences, making the team a liability. Similarly, communication challenges as a trait of global multicultural teams may be a factor for poor productivity. This challenge may portray itself through language barriers and differences in communication cues. The geographical difference may also cause logistical challenges with differing schedules and time zones (Stocker et al., 2018). These factors, if not properly addressed, will result in poor outcomes in productivity. Other factors such as norms regarding individualistic and collective patterns embedded within a national culture may be problematic in productivity.
Global teams can influence the greater organizational culture to a large extent by the individuals. Each individual possessing unique values that are beneficial to the performance will influence others during an exchange of norms common in interactions. The organization shared values will be broadened by the contribution from a diversity of culture (Beauregard et al., 2018). Also, complementing values limited in some cultures and present in others may be pooled together to make a general culture. For example, assertive cultures are limited in terms of ingroup collectivism and vice versa. Both these attributes are necessary for the organization's high productivity; individuals from each culture, through frequent interactions and proper management, will influence each to adopt some levels of their values. This aspect contributes to developing an all-around effective team.
In this paper, it is illustrated that cultures are an important aspect of an organization that influences its members' behavior. It is organizational culture and not guidelines and policies that directly contribute to the productivity of the organization. A global team provides the organization with an opportunity to benefit from a diversity of experience and perceptions. However, if poorly managed, global teams will fail on the challenges common to its structural composition.
References
Beauregard, A., Basile, K., & Thompson, C. A. (2018, April). (PDF) Organizational Culture in the Context of National ... ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/324862291_Organizational_Culture_in_the_Context_of_National_Culture.
Karma, K., & Vadi, M. (2016). The Measurement of Organizational Culture: Cross-Country Perspective. SSRN Electronic Journal . https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2892989
Mallak, L. A., & Kurstedt, H. A. (2015). Using Culture Gap Analysis to Manage Organizational Change. Engineering Management Journal , 8 (2), 35–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/10429247.1996.11414891
Stocker, F., Abib, G., Veneza, G., & Lourenço, M. L. (2018, August). Virtual teams and multiculturality differences and impacts ... ResearchGate. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326979535_VIRTUAL_TEAMS_AND_MULTICULTURALITY_DIFFERENCES_AND_IMPACTS_OF_ORGANIZATIONAL_CULTURE_IN_AN_I_T_COMPANY.
